TINDERBOX

Alex continues to write and write. She’s making a lot of progress with her letter forms – she still occasionally reverses J and Z, but most of the other letters are accurately shaped and she’s able to draw them quite small. Telling her how to spell something is much less laborious these days – she can handle being given a couple of letters at a time, and she draws individual letters quickly.

And she does tend to ask us how to spell. I know that invented spelling is supposed to be the thing, and I think it would really help her reading skills if she tried to puzzle out how to write words on her own. But when she writes on her own, she sticks to random collections of letters, the alphabet, her name, and a few words she knows how to spell well. She may be too much of a perfectionist to use invented spelling, or she may need a bigger base of words she can spell before she has the confidence to strike out on her own. In the meantime, she has a lot of patience for being helped to spell sentences letter by letter.

She’s starting to ask about upper case vs. lower case letters (she doesn’t know many lower case letters) and also about placing periods in her sentences. It’s so fascinating to me, how much writing progress occurs when you have something to say.

I’d say that pique is her biggest motivator for independent writing right now. I have in my possession notes which say “NO NO NO NO NO I AM SAD” “NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO I AM MAD” AND “TO MAMA FROM ALEX NO I WONT U YOU ARE MAKE KING ME MAD” (she asked me, separately, how to spell “make” and “king”). I think I’m supposed to feel terrible about receiving these, but instead I think they’re hilarious.

We’ve left reading strictly alone for some time; I was feeling like I might have pushed a bit too hard when she first showed interest in learning to read, so I backed way off. But yesterday we had a conversation about it. We were tucked away in the pharmacy waiting area at the supermarket so that I could nurse Colin, and there was a big display of media tie-in picture books. I will read to Alex for hours – we went through The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe in less than a day – but I have a longstanding policy that I will not read books based on a movie or TV show. I hate them. I am not totally anti- licensed characters; she watches videos and she has some Disney Princess and Little Einsteins toys. But the books are pretty much universally bad. They’re created as a product, not imagined by someone burning to tell a story, and it shows. Awful writing, stupid plots, developmentally inappropriate elements… okay, that’s enough ranting. But that’s the reason for my policy.

So Alex wanted me to read the Spongebob Squarepants books we were sitting beside, and I reminded her that I don’t read books like that. I also pointed out that when she can read on her own, she can read whatever books she wants – so if she wants Spongebob stories, the best thing to do is learn to read.

“But that will take a long time!”

“I don’t really think so. It all comes down to practice, and I think that if you practiced every day you could learn to read pretty well in about a month. So not too long.”

We went on to talk about other things. But that evening she brought me a pencil and some post-its and asked me to write her notes. She did pretty well at reading, with assistance, things like “I had fun at the park. Did you?” and “I am not a cat. I am not a dog. I am a Mama.” And she didn’t balk at trying.

Then today she told me, “You know what? In December, I’m going to learn reading every day.”

“Okay,” I said. “We can do that.” I wonder if that motivation will last.